The team bosses of the Volkswagen and Chevrolet teams in the STCC both believe a solution needs to be found to reunite the Swedish touring car scene, which has been split this year with the departure of four teams to form their own series.
With a conflict of views on the future direction of the Championship, primarily the technical regulations, between the STCC organisers and four of the STCC’s top teams, Volvo Polestar Racing, Flash Engineering, WestCoast Racing and Brovallen Design – the teams broke away to form their own series this year called the TTA – Racing Elite League, using mid-engined, rear-wheel drive V6 silhouette chassis whilst STCC continued with a phased cross-over from Super 2000 to the British Touring Car Championship’s Next Generation Touring Car (NGTC) formula.
The TTA has continued with a separate calendar, and has taken some of the STCC’s key events such as the popular city race at Gothenburg, races at Falkenberg & Karlskoga, as well as re-introducing the ex-Formula One circuit at Anderstorp to the Swedish motorsport calendar, whilst the STCC has also added new events with the successful airport race at Östersund last month and a highly anticipated season finale at Solvalla.
“Obviously there’s a lot happening in Sweden between the series, but I think the STCC has survived really well,” said Chevrolet Motorsport Sweden’s Team Principal Nicklass Karlsson to TouringCarTimes. “We have a strong Volkswagen team, we have Chevrolet and Honda, so I think the package is good, even if we are missing Volvo of course.”
“I think that Sweden is a bit too small to have two strong series. I don’t think the sponsors who are involved have the strength to put money in both series, which means that one series needs to back off in some way.”
Volkswagen Team Biogas Team Principal Tommy Kristoffersson also agrees that something must be done, welcoming the recently confirmed intervention by the national sporting authority (ASN) of Sweden, SBF.
“We were struggling a little bit from the start because we felt a threat with this new series TTA, but I think we’ve come out pretty well,” said Kristoffersson to TouringCarTimes. “OK, for sure we need to have more brands, that’s something we have to work on for the future, we have to have more manufacturers or importers in Sweden that can I join us. I think it’s time to start the work and try to find something that we can maybe call a ‘Super Motorsport Weekend’, and we can collect all the good drivers, all the good teams and all the good cars on the same weekend, and that’s the target for next season.”
“I think that everybody can now see what happens when you split, all of us have suffered, so I think it’s something that we have to keep in mind when we sit together and try to find a solution, that maybe this split wasn’t the most clever thing to do.”
